The present invention relates to a biological information acquisition and presentation kit, and more particularly to a measurement kit that can be used by general subjects without difficulty to manage mental health or measure the degree of stress.
Modern society is full of a lot more stressors, and people of today live their life while exposed to the repeated buildup and relief of stresses from such stressors. If you are in yourself vulnerable to stresses or cannot get rid of them, you will be in poor shape or, in the worst case, suffer from depressions. In recent years, many people have had troubles stemming from stresses, and there have been a number of methods or sites to measure stress objectively.
For instance, there are questionnaires such as CMI (the Cornel medical index for checking physical and mental health in general), TMI (for checking vegetative neurosis), SCL (the stress check list), STCL (for checking stress tolerances), Y-G personality test (the Yatabe and Gilford Personality Test), INV (the Seiken Type Personal Inventory), MAS (for checking the degree of uncertainty and fear), MMPI (Minnesota Multiphasic personality inventory), Egogram (for checking the state of ego), SDS (self-depression scale), and motivation scores (for checking the degree to which motivation is deprived).
However, these objective estimation methods are largely elusive in terms of how each one individual feels. There are further problems; for instance, too many questions take too much time to fill in, and day-to-day filling-in results in poor reliability from familiarity.
If you can estimate the degree of such psychological stress objectively and quantitatively, then you will be able to learn the degree to which you are tired, introduce suitable means for getting rid of stress in daily life, or take aggressive action for relaxation, thereby effectively maintaining and promoting day-to-day health. Further, recent studies of psychoneuroimmunology, etc. have revealed that autonomic balances due to stress are helpful for immune mechanism adjustments and have an increased risk of heat ailments and cerebral ischemia, and the optimization of autonomic balances by stress control has been expected to become preventive medicine for heart diseases, cerebrovascular accidents (cerebral hemorrhage and cerebral infarction) and cancers.
There is a method for measuring a stress marker (protein) as the objective degree of stress, for instance, a kit for measuring the degree of stress from the concentration of cortisol, etc. in saliva. However, problems with this measuring kit are that it is hard for general subjects to use and costs much for running, so it is not still put to practical use.
There are internal organs under control by both the sympathetic and parasympathetic nerves of the autonomic nervous system, among which it is the heart and an eyeball that can be measured for movements in a relatively easy yet non-invasive way.
For the heart, heart rate variation analysis for determining the degree of stress from a heart rate variation is well known in the art. For the heart rate variation analysis, there are some measuring means such as electrocardiograms and pulsimeter, and volumetric pulse waves in particular may be easily measured by the mere attachment of a photoelectric sensor clip to an earlobe. Because of the need of brining an electrode or infrared sensor into contact with the subject, however, it is unreasonable for general subjects to obtain stable measurements. Heart rates vary largely depending on attitudes and movements, and addition to the cardiovascular system of loads such as running or going up stairs are significantly reflected on them. In addition, the heart rates are sensitive to the so-called physical stress; for psychological stress measurement, it is required to rely on some limitations so as to eliminate such influences. In short, the heart rates are too difficult to measure.
On the other hand, eyeball movement in general, and a pupillary diameter in particular is directly governed by both the sympathetic and parasympathetic nerves of the autonomic nervous system in a region surround by the sphincter muscle of pupil having a centripetal path starting from the retinal optic nerve and a centrifugal path governed primarily by the autonomic nerve plus the parasympathetic nerve and the dilator pupillae muscle governed by the sympathetic nerve; the eyeball is the only one organ whose movement can be measured in a non-contact way. Further, the dilator pupillae muscle and the sphincter muscle of pupil are governed by the sympathetic and parasympathetic nerves with no neurotransmitter interleaved between them, and so they have a feature of being fast responsive.
In this regard, some methods of measuring a pupillary diameter have been known from Patent Publications 1 to 4. With such measuring methods wherein a measurer brings a measuring kit in alignment with the pupillary position of a subject, however, it is not possible for the subject to bring the measuring kit in alignment with the subject's own pupil for measurement.
Patent Publication 4 shows a measuring kit wherein a fixed lamp is presented to one eyeball of a subject while an infrared illuminator and an infrared camera are positioned relative to another eyeball of the subject to take an image of the pupil, and a visible light photo-stimulus is presented to measure the then pupillary light reflex, thereby working out various parameters for pupillary light reflex. Because the attachment of the kit to the subject keeps the subject perfectly out of sight, the subject is forcibly placed in tension, or measurement cannot be carried out unless the subject is sitting on a chair or lying down on bed.
Patent Publication 5 shows how to detect where in a visual field the focus of the eye is set, and says nothing about conversion into a physiological or emotional index.
Patent Publication 6 shows equipment for letting a physician measure the pupillary light reflex of a patient; that is, it is not possible for general subjects to achieve alignment by themselves.
Patent publication 7 shows equipment that is adapted to primarily feed a respiration rate back to a user, and which may also detect partial nictitation (wink). With this equipment, however, it is not possible to measure the rotary motion of an eyeball or a pupillary diameter.
Patent Publication 1
JP(A) 2002-238853
Patent Publication 2
JP(A) 2004-283609
Patent Publication 3
JP(A) 2004-65527
Patent Publication 4
JP(A) 2005-143684
Patent Publication 5
JP(A) 2004-181233
Patent Publication 6
JP(A) 2004-283609
Patent Publication 7
JP(A) 2005-152462
Non-Patent Publication 1
“Shingaku Giho”, MBE2004-127 (2005-03), pp. 17-20 “Studies on the estimation capability of pupillary area during nictitation”
Non-Patent Publication 2
“Neurology”, 42:302-314, 1995, “Pupillary Reflex”
Non-Patent Publication 3
“Clinics & Studies”, Vol. 73, No. 12 (1996-12), pp. 234-145, “Electronic Pupilometer Iris Coder Seminar”
Non-Patent Publication 4
“Neuroophthalmology”, Vol. 10, No. 2 (1993), pp. 131-136, “Applications of iris coders in ophthalmology”